Great post from VC Charlie O'Donnell.
This industry just LOVES to talk about “celebrating failure”. Every founder parrots the concept of failing fast.
To dive further into Charlie’s post:
1) Celebrating failure is about giving yourself the space to get it wrong. It’s about looking at failure as an opportunity for improvement instead of an unforgivable sin.
2) There is a different aphorism that I love (but don’t always live up to), that urges “make new mistakes”. This suggests that the sin isn’t making a mistake, but not learning from one, and thus repeating it.
3) It is absolutely possible to shout about 1) and fail on 2). If you don’t own what you did wrong, you won’t learn anything and you’ll act the same way in the future.
I had a therapist who used to say that behavior change was a three-step process.
First, you have to learn to recognize when you are reacting to something in a “negative” way (in a way you don’t want).
Once you’ve learned to recognize that, you can start introspecting what triggered that reaction.
Eventually, you learn to see that trigger coming and that gives you the time to respond instead of react.
It all boils down to having the vulnerability to recognize when YOU do something you don’t want to repeat. Not the VC. Not the other founder. Not the market.